Toronto Sketches 9: "The Way We Were" Columns from the Toronto Sunday Sun

By Mike Filey

Mike Filey’s column "The Way We Were" first appeared in the Toronto Sunday Sun not long after the first edition of the paper hit the newsstands and front porches on September 16, 1973. Since that day more than three decades ago, Mike’s column has enjoyed an uninterrupted stretch as one of the paper’s most popular features. In 1992 a number of his columns were reprinted in Toronto Sketches: The Way We Were by Dundurn Press. Since then another seven volumes of Toronto Sketches have been published, each of which has attained great success both with Toronto book buyers and with former Torontonians wishing to relive an earlier, gentler time in the city’s past.

This ninth volume features a variety of stories, including a look at Toronto’s 1904 inferno, the birth of Rex Heslop’s Rexdale community, a visit to Sunnyside Amusement Park, and a few fascinating tales about the city’s streetcars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Apr 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781459712454

Mike Filey

Mike Filey was born in Toronto in 1941. He has written more than two dozen books on various facets of Toronto's past and for more than thirty-five years has contributed a popular column, "The Way We Were," to the Toronto Sunday Sun. His Toronto Sketches series is more popular now than ever before.

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The New Old Toronto Street

One of the most historic streets in Toronto is little Toronto Street. It’s only one block long, if you don’t count the intersection it makes on the east side with Court Street, another small thoroughfare that also has some interesting history. To further define the limits of the present-day Toronto Street, it connects King Street to the south with Adelaide to the north. Notice that I used the expression the present-day Toronto Street, since what we have today is not the Toronto Street originally laid out by a few pioneer surveyors back in the late 1700s.

Historically, today’s Toronto Street is, in relative terms, a rather recent addition that came into being sometime after 1830. Dr. Scadding in his book Toronto of Old identifies the original Toronto Street as today’s Victoria Street, and a very busy street it was. That’s because in the early days of York (Toronto’s original name), Yonge Street did not extend south of Lot Street (now Queen) due to the presence of a marshy swamp. Back then the small community’s downtown was along King Street east and west of Church Street. To get there pedestrians as well as animal-drawn wagons and carts from the north and northwest would have to detour around the marsh and continue the trip via a thoroughfare called Toronto Street that connected Lot with King.

When it was decided to fill in the marsh and extend Yonge Street south of Queen, the original Toronto Street was closed and that land given to those who owned property through which the newly lengthened Yonge Street now ran. By the way, it should be noted that back then opening and closing roads was no big deal since in most cases these so-called roads were usually no more that dirt paths.

Looking north on Toronto Street from the same vantage point on King Street in 1914 and in 2002.

Some years later a new street was opened east of Victoria that connected King with Adelaide. To identify it an old street name was resurrected. It became today’s Toronto Street. Several grand buildings were erected on the new street only a couple of which still exist. They can be seen in the accompanying photos taken from the same vantage point and separated in time by more than 90 years.

To the extreme left is the Seventh Toronto Post Office (1851–53), a Greek temple-like structure now occupied by the Argus Corporation. Still on the left and at the top of the street is the Excelsior Life Building erected in 1914–15 and designed by Old City Hall architect E.J. Lennox. Opposite it, and barely visible in the modern photo, is the Consumers’ Gas Building (erected 1876, with an 1899 addition).

At the top of the street in the old photo is the Eighth Toronto Post Office of 1876. It was sacrificed in 1960 for the modern office building that looms in the background of the 2002 view. For transportation buffs, the old view features a horse and wagon, a couple of bicycles, and a half-dozen or so of the new-fangled gas buggies.

January 5, 2003

Bridging the Western Gap

So there I was reading one of Toronto’s newspapers when I came across another of those articles concerning the building of a bridge from the foot of Bathurst Street over the Western Gap to Toronto Island. This one had some interesting comments that I thought the reader would find of interest.

While on a recent tour around the harbour, the chairman of the Toronto Harbour Commission stated that the work of constructing a bridge connecting the city and the Island at the foot of Bathurst Street should be started at once.

How would you finance it? he was asked.

I believe that the Dominion and Provincial governments, the city and the Harbour Commission should contribute to its construction, he replied.

And what about the objections raised by the Island residents that it would mean cars over there?

I have only this to say, that the Island is for all the citizens, and not for a few.

With the Island bridge very much in the news these days, one might conclude that this article appeared in a recent edition of the newspaper. However, eagle-eyed readers will no doubt have noticed references to the Toronto Harbour Commission and the use of the expression Dominion government in the article. The former vanished in 1999 with the creation of the new Toronto Port Authority, and the infrequent use of the word Dominion these days provides clues that the news item as quoted is an old one. But how old you may ask?

It actually appeared in the Telegram on April 1, 1924! And mercy me, they’re still haggling over the project.

Actually the idea of connecting the Island to the mainland is much older than that. In fact, we find that building such a bridge was one of the conditions attached to allowing streetcars to operate on Sundays in Toronto.

In this day of wide-open Sundays it’s difficult to believe that at one time in Toronto’s past the operation of public transit vehicles of any kind on Sunday was illegal, and those who tried to do so could and would be fined and/or put in jail. And with the adoption of the Lord’s Day Act in the early 1900s other things that we now take for granted (buying bread, participating in sports, going to the movies) were also defined as being against the law.

This streetcar is typical of the kind that would have been used on the proposed Toronto Island route over the Western Gap. The sides were removed during the warmer months, resulting in these vehicles being known as convertible cars. This particular vehicle, seen here at the Dovercourt and Van Horne (now Dupont) intersection in 1904, was built 10 years earlier and scrapped in 1925.

In the case of Sunday streetcars, arguments were made both pro and con for their operation with a series of referendum votes being called to settle the question. The votes in 1892 and again in 1893 saw the use of the cars on the Sabbath defeated, while that of 1897 resulted in the operation of Sunday streetcars approved by a margin of slightly more than 200 out of a total of 32,324 cast. It was close, but Torontonians were now able to go to church on a streetcar.

Part of the scheme put forward by the privately owned streetcar company to influence the approval of the lucrative Sunday streetcar operations was its agreement to establish a new streetcar route to the Island. This line, which would be part of the city system accessible from any other city route using a transfer, would permit the less-affluent Toronto population a day on the Island without the necessity of paying the extra 10-cent fare to cross the bay on a privately owned ferry boat.

The street railway company, while appearing to be on the side of the general public, knew that there was little likelihood of ever having to build this line since the cost of erecting a bridge over the Western Gap on which the tracks would be laid as well as the access road from Bathurst and King streets were the sole responsibilities of the city. It was a well-known fact that the cash-strapped young city didn’t have an extra $104,720 lying around for something as frivolous as a bridge to the Island.

By the way, today’s estimated cost of building an Island bridge, now referred to as a fixed link, has increased somewhat and is now estimated at many millions of dollars.

January 12, 2003

Transporting Toronto

Located just north of the city’s busy waterfront and steps from the CN Tower and SkyDome is the ancient CP Roundhouse. Where Canadian Pacific Railway’s mighty steam engines were once serviced, the folks at Steam Whistle Brewery now turn out a tasty Pilsner.

While it’s good to see somebody occupying what was just another abandoned historic building, a brewery certainly wasn’t what many of us hoped would be the fate of the old structure that was constructed in 1929 on the site of Canadian Pacific’s first Toronto roundhouse.

Steam engines continued to be serviced in this unique building for more than half a century with the huge doors closing for good in 1986. After the building’s closure, I remember attending meeting after meeting during which a multitude of interested and well-meaning people discussed a whole bunch of ideas that might bring the old building back to life. Some believed that an operating steam railway museum would be the perfect re-use while others, myself included, thought that it would be a great place to tell the much broader story of Canada’s fascinating transportation history.

Our plan would include, but not be limited to, just the era of steam. Showing the world what Canadians have done on land and sea and in the air would, we believed, do more to maximize visitations and increase income.

Souvenir postcard of the Toronto-built passenger steamer SS Kingston. Note the biplane overhead.

But those discussions ultimately went for naught when in the late spring of 2000 Steam Whistle began brewing operations in the roundhouse. Since that time any ideas to use the rest of the building for museum purposes seem to have been deleted from the old building’s future role in Toronto.

That’s unfortunate because there’s quite a story to tell. Any plan to tell the country’s transportation story in a roundhouse setting certainly wouldn’t lack for content. In fact, you could use all of the building’s massive interior space just to tell the story of Toronto’s contributions to that fabulous story.

For instance, here are just two events that took place in Toronto on January 19, the day I originally wrote this column, that prove my point.

It was on a cold January 19, 1901, that one of the finest passenger lake boats ever seen on the Great Lakes was launched in Toronto. And on that same date, a mere 49 years later, the first all-Canadian fighter jet designed and built in this country took to the skies out at the Avro Canada plant northwest of Toronto.

There is no question that January 19 was, and remains, a special day in the history of transportation in Ontario’s capital.

The steamer Kingston was built for the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Company (R&O) by the Bertram Engineering Works whose shipyard was located at the foot of Bathurst Street. The factory where parts of the great ship were fabricated is now occupied, in part, by the exotic car dealership at the northeast corner of Front and Bathurst. The finished components were transported across the railway tracks, down to the waterfront where they would be fitted together in time to create a fine new passenger ship, the 290-foot-long SS Kingston, which was powered by an inclined, three-crank, triple-expansion steam engine that ran a pair of 23-foot-diameter side paddlewheels. Kingston operated on the Toronto–Thousand Islands–Prescott run. At that last port most passengers would transfer to other ships for the thrilling ride through the Lachine Rapids and onwards to Montreal.

However, following the tragic and deadly fire of September 17, 1949, that destroyed SS Noronic while at its berth in Toronto, Canada Steamship Lines (the successor to the R&O) decided to end all passenger ship service. The once-proud Kingston was retired from service and eventually scrapped.

Interestingly, even while this Toronto-built vessel awaited its fate, another creation from the hands of a new generation of local craftsman was about to make Canadian aviation history. With the world immersed in the uncertainties of the Cold War, the Royal Canadian Air Force was searching for a new aircraft to replace its outdated collection of piston-engine Mustangs and Sea Furies and pioneer Vampire jets. What was needed was an all-purpose, all-weather, twin-engine jet fighter.

Avro Canada’s second CF-100, FB-K, designed and built at the company’s suburban Toronto factory.

Officials looked at a number of jets designed and built by Americans, but decided our people could do as well or even better. This decision, one that was derided at the time by several so-called experts, would result in Avro Canada’s remarkable CF-100, the first of which flew January 19, 1950.

In total, 692 CF-100s were built at the Malton, Ontario, factory. Interestingly, even after 30 years had passed since that first flight, several of the aircraft were still active as electronic warfare trainers. One CF-100 has even been honoured in the form of a permanent monument in a park-like setting on Derry Road East (near Goreway Drive), just a short distance from its birthplace.

To learn more about this Canadian aviation success story (and one that could have been a feature attraction in Canada’s transportation story in the CP Roundhouse) read The Avro CF-100 by Larry Milberry from CANAV Books.

January 19, 2003

* After the sale of SkyDome to Rogers Communications in early 2005, the name of the stadium was quickly changed to Rogers Centre.

Bright, Shiny, and New

Almost without exception this column features an ancient photograph more often than not taken by some anonymous photographer. To be sure, where the identity of the person who took the picture is known the work is credited. Unfortunately, the passage of time since the photo was snapped usually precludes that possibility.

The matter of photo credits aside, in almost every instance where there are buildings in the old photograph, the vast majority of those structures has been demolished as a result of Toronto’s rush to replace what many regarded as passé, with things bright, shiny, and new.

One conclusion that might be drawn from all of this is that any photo containing an image of a building that no longer stands must have been taken by an old (or deceased) photographer. With this in mind you can imagine my consternation as I went through a bunch of photographs that I personally took since acquiring my interest in old Toronto some years ago. Many of those views showed buildings that are no more. Can it be that my stuff is also ancient? Is it possible that I am getting old? Or am I just older?

While I sit back and ponder my future I offer for your perusal a quartet of my ancient photos.

January 26, 2003

The University Theatre stood on the north side of Bloor Street between Bellair Street and Avenue Road. This was one of the first major motion picture palaces to be erected following the end of the Second World War in 1945. The 1,556-seat theatre’s official opening was postponed several times owing to the shortage of structural steel that had been diverted for use in the construction of electrical generating stations around the province. This same shortage resulted in the delayed opening of the Toronto-Barrie highway (now 400) and the Toronto Bypass Highway (now 401). The University finally opened in 1949 and was one of the city’s most popular movie houses until its closure in 1986. At that time there were plans to incorporate a portion of the theatre as well as the theatre facade in the new development planned for the site. Unfortunately, the curtain never went up on this interesting proposal. The marquee reveals that the feature presentation at the theatre when I took this picture in 1979 was Apocalypse Now.

When I was a kid, this imposing structure was usually referred to rather disparagingly as 999 Queen Street. Built between 1846 and 1858, the Provincial Lunatic Asylum was regarded as one of the most modern treatment facilities for the mentally ill anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the stigma of what went on inside the asylum precluded the building having any future. And while pleas were made to at least save certain architecturally significant portions of the complex (the massive dome, for instance), the whole thing came crashing down in 1975. The Queen Street Mental Health Centre now occupies the site.